A note about the poem from L.A. Johnson for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: After my father died, he was gone but his things were everywhere. Looking around my parents’ house, it was as if he were still alive. His death made the boundaries between the real and the imaginary murkier than ever, and my brain so badly wanted to be tricked—I would see his jacket by the door and think: Oh, he’s come back and this was all a bad dream. That thought would last a moment, then I would realize my mistake and my sorrow would set in again. In grief, the world, as I perceived it, was changed. This poem uses this sense of surreality to explore the domestic space after tragedy.